Brace Yourself

R's mom emailed me the night before we booked his session to see if I could squeeze some portraits in the next day before he got his braces put on the day after that!
As a prior member of the
my-teeth-hurt-because-I-have-braces-but-my-smile-
will-thank-me-later club, how could I resist?!

Being 13, it's normal to have to live with the cute, multi-colored rubber bands that are the only fun part of braces, but R has something much more fun to get to come home to...

He lives on a ranch!


His father said their horses are so tame, they're like puppy dogs.

*I don't know that I've ever seen a blue-eyed horse before! Though I'm not around horses very often...

R certainly has a special bond with them.

I hope you are adjusting well to your new "hardware". As I said, your smile will thank you later!
:)

Lifted

As a propeller of renewal, I gave my blog a lift!

The girl in the header was one of the children we photographed on Saturday during our shoot @ the workshop. This was shot with some of the new techniques I learned from Jinky, and I love how it came out!

I'm looking forward to my shoots next week!

*But first*.....

Meet R...

Left My Heart In....

.....not really, but you know how the song goes.

So, I am home, refreshed and renewed, and SOOOOOO excited to begin this new year. (Yes, technically the year is in its third month, but I feel as though it's the beginning.)

I will post my official San Francisco report later because right now I am going to post the session I had last week right before I left, but first, let me introduce you to my new best pal, (I'm not sure if she's aware of our "best pal"-ness).

more to come....

Flying the Coop!

WILL RETURN MONDAY!!!!
:)

Can't Leave Out...

...this sweet family!

So, back during the rush of Christmas season, THREE WEEKS before 12/25, I had three sessions that week. And among my crazy-busy, stress-filled, pre-holiday times, well, we'll call those "the lost sessions." They didn't make it to the blog!

This is the first family of the three that were sadly left out!


Miss E was just a bundle of precious energy!




Her mommy met me at my Holidaze booth, and won my drawing!


I'm so glad it was this adorable family that won because they were so kind, and endearing, and a pleasure to meet.

Did I mention Miss E had some energy? And quite the flare for the dramatic! This little one could be on a stage one day, that's for sure!

Either as a ballerina...


... or maybe a dancer!

No matter what she does in the future, she has two sweet parents behind her for support, (who are as cute and flirty together as newly-weds!)

:)

*The other two families who have yet to make their BP blog debut will come around soon enough. I may just pop them in for a surprise one day! Keep on the look-out!

Second Helping

I'm so excited! I leave for my "secret" workshop in 8 days! (That's the name of it, "The Secret Workshop", and since it has the word "secret" in it, I feel like I have to whisper when I say the name of it!)

:)

I found a roomie on the workshop's blog. A fellow "newly" wed with no kiddos yet, among other things in common, so I think we're going to have a great time! She's already scoped out the city, (San Francisco), and what spots we should hit in our leisure time. I just have to pack and I'm ready to go! CAN'T. WAIT....

Tonight, while editing Miss A's session, I came across some more images that I just had to share of this cutie.
Enjoy!

It's OK to hug a tree

So, I saw this on the Today show a couple weeks ago and have been saving my catalogs ever since, meaning to do this, but just putting it off....
To give you a little background info. first on how much joy this brings me: I am a card-carrying member of the 'I LOVE TO RECYCLE' club. I don't know why exactly, but it just sort of gives me this saving-the-world-high to put everything that I think could possibly be recycled in our recycle bin each day. It is a little badge on my green vest that we downsized our trash can with the city and up-sized our recycle bin! It's about every other week where, from our little house of two, that come trash day, we have a full recycle bin, but nothing in our trash bin because we often do not compile one full bag of trash a week!
I put everything in the recycle bin from your typical junk mail and milk jug, to a lightly used paper plate. Don't be grossed out, if the plate just had toast on it, crumbs can easily be shaken off to a perfectly clean plate that could be either: a.) used again or b.) recycled into a piece of paper for a young child to one day learn to write on! (And too, I often look for a scrap piece of paper to jot notes on before I'll pull a brand new piece of paper because I feel guilty if something else "junky" is next to me, perfectly able to hold my notes, and gets tossed.) Now, I know the other school of thought here would be, didn't you waste a tree by buying that paper plate? Well, I don't know, you tell me. Because if I had used one of my ceramic plates for my piece of toast, would I be wasting water, another one of Mother Earth's precious resources, to wash it? ....tricky...isn't it? So I figure, use the paper plates and just recycle, thereby saving the world two ways over, (by recycling the plate and saving the water.)
:) *Though, don't get me wrong, of course if the paper plate is obviously used and gross...it goes in the trash...

Anyways, so to get to the point: on the Today show, they did a story on a school up north that made it their project to collect unused catalogs and not only recycle them, but log on to this website, www.catalogchoice.org , and choose to no longer receive the catalog! It's one thing to recycle the unread, unappreciated catalog, but it's a whole other to completely cancel your subscription so that the tree is not wasted in the first place! I got very excited over this.

It just takes a minute to do it! You just hit the "Get Started!" button on the website with your unwanted catalog in hand, and it takes you from there. So when I finally declined my pile of catalogs tonight that have been stacking up for weeks, I felt like I deserved to go buy an Excursion to make up for all the global warming I just prevented. (HA!)

Just so you didn't miss the address...(I feel like an infomercial):

www.catalogchoice.org

And remember Earth Day, April 22nd, and plant a tree with your kids!
:)